Artist's Biography

Maggie Lowe Tennesen is a painter who lives in Southern California. She was born in Riverside, CA, and has lived a diverse existence. She went into the convent after high school and was trained in sculpture and painting at Dominican College in Houston, Texas. She left the convent after two years and then went to Cal Arts. Her teachers were John Baldassari, Allan Kaprow, and Nam June Paik. Maggie worked originally as a performance artist, and her work was exhibited the Long Angeles County Musuem of Art with a group of three other artists, including Alexis Smith. Maggie received her Master of Fine Arts at California State University at Long Beach in painting. She currently teaches part time at Loyola Marymount University and Long Beach City College.

Maggie is an abstract painter and colorist who is comfortable with a wide range of paint and media. Her current works are composed of lines and crosshatches that evoke city maps, circuit boards and the patience required in meditative acts. In the midst of the kinetic images, there are small carved icons inspired by Asian and Buddhist traditions that represent the islands of calm that the artist seeks through meditation. She lives in Southern California with her husband, dog, two cats, and her tortoise, Swift. She has a studio in San Pedro. She is a prolific painter. When she is not painting, she is at home, traveling, camping in Baja, or rushing her nature-writer husband to the airport for a trip to some jungle somewhere.